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THE  LAST   CHRISTMAS   TREE 


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THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 


AN  IDYL  OF  IMMORTALITY 
BY     JAMES      LANE     ALLEN 


PORTLAND    MAINE 

THOMAS    BIRD    MOSHER 

MDCCCCXIV 


COPYRIGHT 

JAMES    LANE   ALLEN 

1914 


fl  YtZ  IU 


TO    THOSE 

WHO    KNOW    THEY    HAVE 

NO    SOLUTION 

OF    THE    UNIVERSE 

YET    HOPE    FOR    THE    BEST 

AND    LIVE    FOR    IT 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS    TREE 


In  a  somewhat  different  and  in  a 
much  briefer  form  The  Last  Christ- 
mas Tree  appeared  several  years 
ago  in  The  Saturday  Evening  Post. 


THE  LAST   CHRISTMAS  TREE 

IFE  on  this  earth,  my 
children,  means  warmth. 
Do  not  forget  that  : 
whatever  else  it  may 
be,  life  as  we  know  it  is  warmth. 
Every  living  earthly  thing  is  on 
fire  and  every  fire  is  perpetually 
going  out.  When  the  warmth,  when 
the  fire,  which  is  within  us  and 
which  is  perpetually  going  out,  goes 
out  for  good,  that  is  the  end  of  us. 
It  is  the  end  of  us  as  far  as  the  life 
which  we  derive  from  the  planet  is 
ourselves.  If  our  planetary  life  is 
our  only  life,  when  the  planetary  fire 
within  us  dies  out,  all  of  us  dies  out. 
If  planetary  fire  be  not  our  only  vital 
flame,    vital   energy,    then    planetary 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

dust  and  ashes  are  not  the  complete 
end  of  us,  not  the  last  word  of  our 
terrible  lovable  human  story.  And 
if  this  be  true,  what  next  may  come, 
what  kind  of  story  will  then  begin  with 
ourselves  as  its  characters,  what  sort 
of  existence  for  us  will  emerge  from 
planetary  extinction  —  that  has  always 
been  the  one  greatest  question,  solici- 
tude, hope,  help,  song,  prayer  of  our 
race.  It  has  never  been  more  a  prob- 
lem than  now  when  we  know  more 
about  many  other  things  than  we  have 
ever  known  yet  can  find  out  nothing 
about  this  thing  and  were  never  so 
impatient  of  our  ignorance. 

But  meantime  life  on  this  earth 
implies  warmth  and  carries  warmth: 
that  at  least  we  positively  have  found 
out  though  without  knowing  what 
warmth  is.  Every  living  terrestial 
creature  is  a  candle,  is  a  lamp.     The 

4 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

rose  is  a  perfumed  lamp  and  when  its 
bowl  is  without  oil,  that  inimitable  lamp 
so  silently  built  to  give  off  for  a  little 
while  a  few  serene  rays  of  vestal  beauty 
as  silently  falls  to  pieces.  The  pine 
tree  is  a  wild  candle  poised  on  a  moun- 
tain table.  The  eagle  is  a  winged 
candle  burning  to  cinders  on  a  peak 
of  air.  The  albatross  is  a  floating 
conflagration  with  all  the  ineffectual 
sea  drenching  its  back  and  breast. 
The  polar  bear  is  a  four-branch  candle 
in  a  candlestick  of  snow.  We  human 
beings  are  laughing  and  tear-dripping 
candles,  descending  swiftly  to  our 
sockets.  The  sun  and  the  stars  are 
candles,  whirling  golden  candles  in 
the  night  of  the  universe,  a  long,  long 
night.  One  by  one  they  too  burn 
down  at  those  brief  intervals  which  we 
with  our  puny  measurements  call  ages. 
The  whole  myriad-lighted  starry  infi- 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

nite,  as  far  as  we  know,  is  a  mere 
ballroom  arranged  for  somebody's 
pleasure,  somebody's  dancing.  The 
candles  may  last  as  long  as  the  master 
of  the  revels  requires  them  ;  and  then 
perhaps  at  some  strange  daybreak  of 
which  we  can  conceive  naught,  they 
will  go  out  to  the  final  one  —  all  go 
out  at  the  coming-on  of  day.  A 
strange  day  indeed  without  any  suns, 
without  any  stars,  these  having  been 
consumed  during  the  ancient  night. 
What  our  human  race  has  always  most 
wished  to  know,  most  liked  to  believe, 
is  that  Nature,  the  whole  universe  of 
Nature,  is  itself  but  a  troubled  night 
of  being ;  and  that  when  Nature  has 
come  to  some  kind  of  end,  the  night 
of  existence  will  have  come  to  an 
end  also.  Beyond  will  have  to  be 
some  kind  of  day,  endless  day.  Our 
human  race  has  always  believed  or  has 

6 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

tried  to  believe  that  on  the  Nature- 
ward  confines  of  that  day  it  will  be 
discovered,  assembled  there,  waiting 
there,  having  journeyed  thither  some- 
how :  no  matter  how,  so  it  arrive.  For 
however  dull  and  petty  man  may  be, 
however  despicable,  brutish,  aban- 
doned, there  has  been  no  lack  of 
sublimity  in  his  vision,  in  his  faith, 
of  what  he  is  to  be  :  that  after  the 
last  star  has  gone  out  in  the  night  of 
Nature,  the  orb  of  his  soul  will  have 
but  begun  to  flash  the  immortality  of 
its  dawn. 

Once  and  for  an  immeasurable  time 
the  whole  earth  was  warm,  and  life  on 
it  being  warmth,  the  life  on  it  was 
everywhere.  That  was  Nature's  par- 
ticular hour  of  the  night  just  then  — 
it  called  for  a  warm  earth  completely 
covered  with  life.  Then  one  day 
something  took  place  that  had  never 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

taken  place  before.  For  the  first  time, 
for  the  very  first  time  in  the  experience 
of  the  earth,  out  of  one  of  its  clouds 
there  began  to  fall,  not  what  had 
always  fallen  in  the  past,  drops  of  rain, 
but  tiny  white  crystals.  At  first  they 
were  few  ;  then  more  and  more ;  then 
myriads,  myriads,  myriads,  until  the 
air  grew  grey  with  the  thick  host  of 
them.  Finally  the  scene  became  as 
if  the  sky  were  the  floor  of  the  desert, 
an  upper  inverted  desert  floor  cov- 
ered with  fine  white  sand,  with  sand- 
dunes  ;  and  the  winds,  sweeping  and 
roaring  across  this  desert  floor,  lifted 
the  dunes,  scattered  them  and  swept 
them  along:  avalanches  of  white  sand, 
cloudy  landslides  of  white  sand  — 
blown  toward  the  earth  underneath. 
No  creature  there  below  had  ever  seen 
the  like ;  and  as  those  avalanches 
slided  down  on  their  heads  and  backs, 

8 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

tumult,  fear,  flight  followed.  Perhaps 
caught  in  the  raging,  roaring  tempest, 
perhaps  having  lost  its  way,  some  bird 
of  brilliant-red  plumage  flew  round 
and  round  like  a  wandering  ball  of 
fire,  uttering  its  cry  of  bewilderment, 
of  helplessness,  of  its  fate  —  the  pro- 
phetic note  of  the  fate  of  everything. 
When  the  first  of  these  strange  cold 
white  crystals  struck  the  warm  earth, 
at  once  they  vanished.  So  that  for  a 
while  the  vast  catastrophe  looked  like 
some  unfeeling  prank  of  the  clouds, 
some  too  grave  a  trick,  heartless 
deception.  But  faster  than  the  first 
could  melt,  others  came,  more,  more, 
until  the  later  ones  arrived  before  the 
earlier  ones  had  disappeared.  And 
then  they  began  to  stay  where  they 
fell.  They  began  to  stay  and  to  pile 
up  one  on  another ;  they  began  to 
make  a  white  spot,  a  frozen  spot.    We 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

know  nothing  as  to  how  and  when 
and  where ;  yet  we  are  bound  to 
understand  that  some  time  there  was 
the  first  snowcloud,  somewhere  the 
first  snowstorm,  the  first  snowbank. 

No  human  eye  beheld  it :  there  was 
to  be  no  human  eye  for  untold  ages 
yet.  But  there  was  one  who  saw,  one 
who  was  present,  one  who  had  brought 
it  to  pass  —  Time ;  and  now  that  the 
first  white  spot  was  prepared  and 
ready  like  some  new  flat  marble  slab, 
bordered  round  with  the  earth's  green 
and  awaiting  humanwise  its  due  in- 
scription, Time  glanced  at  it,  approved 
it,  stepped  forward  and  stooping  down 
wrote  three  words  in  the  sand  —  in 
the  white  sand  of  the  sky  : 

HIC    JACET   TERRA. 


INCE  the  unknown  day  of 
the  first  unknown  snow- 
bank, the  earth  has  made 
no  revolution,  has  not  once  turned 
over  from  side  to  side  without  keep- 
ing undeviatingly  in  the  straight 
road  toward  the  fulfilment  of  that 
epitaph,  Time's  epitaph.  Never  since 
then,  though  fighting  with  all  its 
fires,  has  it  been  able  to  drive  off 
that  pallid  visitant  from  outer  space, 
never  has  it  been  able  to  prevent  the 
persistent  return  of  that  appalling 
stranger.  For  the  little  white  spot 
would  not  out,  would  not  out  for  good. 
If  it  disappeared  in  one  place,  it 
reappeared  in  another  place.  And  it 
invariably  brought  along  more  of  its 
kind :  each  visitant  seemed  to  bring 
a  mate,   a  family,    a   tribe.     In    the 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

blossoming  zones  of  the  earth's  sur- 
face where  we  spend  our  dream-life 
of  pain  and  joy,  if  a  solitary  bee  find 
its  way  to  a  new  field  in  spring,  the 
summer  will  be  likely  to  bring  the 
swarm.  If  a  migratory  bird  by  some 
deviation  of  route  alight  on  a  strange 
continent  or  island,  the  species  may 
some  day  cover  that  continent  or 
island.  And  those  first  downward 
flights  from  the  clouds  began  to  be 
followed  by  other  flights,  by  vaster 
flocks  and  flights.  And  the  earth 
began  to  have  a  new  trouble. 

She,  our  very  human  Mother,  had 
from  the  first  had  enough  troubles  of 
her  own,  as  without  exception  we  her 
very  human  children  have  had  enough 
of  ours.  Sometimes  her  stories  had 
begun  well  but  each  of  them  as  it 
ended  ended  badly.  As  we  now  look 
back  upon  any  one  of  these  finished 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

stories  of  hers,  we  may  derive  some 
satisfaction  from  seeing  that  it  pos- 
sessed the  art,  the  logic,  of  being 
inevitable.  But  that  will  be  our  only 
joy.  Her  great  novels,  her  great 
epics,  have  uniformly  been  stupen- 
dous, immeasurable  cataclysms,  earth- 
tragedies.  But  among  them  all  not 
one  has  possessed  the  awful  beauty, 
the  chaste  splendor,  the  universality, 
of  this  new  trouble  of  hers  with  the 
tiny  crystal. 

We  are  well  accustomed  as  we  look 
out  upon  Nature  at  close  range  to  see 
great  creatures  harrassed  by  little 
creatures.  The  lot  of  each  big  one 
seems  to  be  in  the  keeping  of  some 
little  one,  which  never  quits  it,  nags 
it,  stings  it,  wears  it  out,  drives  it 
desperate,  makes  life  somewhat  a 
burden  to  it  and  death  somewhat  a 
relief.     But  no  one  of  us  has  ever  seen 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

so  huge  and  powerful  a  thing  as  a 
whole  round  world  pitilessly  stalked 
from  age  to  age,  run  down,  overcome 
inch  by  inch,  routed  out  of  a  fair 
destiny  by  such  a  mite  of  a  tormentor 
as  a  crystal.  Nowhere  have  we 
witnessed  so  disproportionate  a  con- 
flict as  that  between  a  sphere  and  a 
snowflake. 

Why,  some  wintry  day  when  you 
in  overcoat  and  gloves  are  tramping 
comfortably  across  your  fields  on 
which  snow  is  falling,  stop  and  draw 
off  one  of  your  gloves,  and  holding  out 
your  hand,  catch  one  of  these  little 
terrors,  one  of  these  dread  arrows  from 
the  unseen  quiver  of  all  whiteness. 
Intercept  it  in  its  passage  towards  the 
earth  and  let  it  strike  you,  strike  your 
palm,  instead  of  striking  the  Mother 
who  has  been  struck  so  often.  One 
instant  after  it  has  reached  your  palm 

J4 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

it  has  dropped  its  disguise  and  has 
turned  into  its  old  familiar  self,  a  rain- 
drop, a  drop  of  dew.  That  is,  under 
the  influence  of  the  warmth  of  your 
planetary  fire,  it  has  returned  to  its 
youth.  For  snow  is  the  old  age  of 
water.  Cloud,  mist,  rain,  dew  —  these 
all  are  young :  their  old  age  is  ice. 
When  a  dewdrop  arranges  itself  for 
perpetuity,  disposes  itself  in  orderly 
fashion  never  to  change  again, 
stretches  itself  out  in  its  rigor  mortis, 
it  has  become  a  crystal.  It  has  given 
up  the  ghost  and  has  become  a  ghost 
—  it  has  become  snow,  the  ghost  of 
the  brook,  the  ghost  of  the  rain. 

Now  this  —  just  this  —  was  the 
Earth's  new  trouble ;  and  this  ever 
since  has  been  her  increasing  trouble 
and  her  losing  fight :  that  over  vaster 
and  vaster  regions  of  her  surface  she 
has  lost  the  power  to  work  the  miracle 
is 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

of  the  resurrection  —  to  bid  the  dead 
arise,  take  back  its  life,  and  having 
burst  from  its  white  sepulchre  ascend 
again  to  the  heavens.  This  is  the 
trouble  of  our  great  Mother  —  that 
she  has  been  fighting  against  old 
age  as  we  her  children  fight  against 
it.  Old  age  has  been  descending  upon 
her  from  the  clouds;  and  wherever 
she  has  not  been  able  to  give  back  to 
old  age  its  youth,  there  old  age  has 
stayed ;  and  wherever  on  the  earth 
old  age  has  stayed,  there  the  earth 
itself  has  become  old. 

And  now  for  us  who  live  on  the  earth 
to-day,  looking  out  upon  the  battle 
between  the  planet  and  the  snowflake, 
how  fares  the  fighting  ? 


16 


F  you  should  start  from 
your  home  in  our  north- 
temperate  latitude  and 
travel  northward  steadily  on  and 
on,  after  a  while  you  would  find  that 
the  air  gradually  grows  colder,  myriads 
of  living  things  begin  to  be  left  behind ; 
fewer  and  fewer  remain  ;  those  that 
do  remain,  whether  animals  or  birds 
or  flowers,  begin  to  lose  gorgeous 
color,  begin  to  become  white.  The 
countless  sounds  of  living  things  begin 
to  die  out.  Everything  is  changed, 
colors  are  gone,  songs  have  ceased. 
On  and  on  you  journey  and  always 
you  are  traveling  towards  silence, 
toward  the  white.  And  at  last  you 
come  to  the  kingdom  of  the  crystal, 
to  the  reign  of  the  snowflake,  to  the 
old  age  of  the  earth  ;  you  come  to  one 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

of  the  battlefields  where  the  snowflake 
has  conquered  the  planet.  Perhaps 
on  this  northward  journey  the  last 
living  thing  you  saw  in  Nature  was  the 
evergreen  —  thriving  there  in  uncon- 
querable youth  on  the  margin  of 
unconquerable  death. 

If  you  should  start  from  your  home 
and  travel  southward,  you  would  at 
first  cross  land  after  land  where  it  grew 
warmer ;  but  if  you  kept  on,  you  would 
at  last  begin  to  recognize  all  that  you 
had  seen  on  your  northward  journey : 
life  failing,  colors  fading,  the  living 
harmonies  of  the  earth  replaced  by  the 
discords  of  Nature's  lifeless  forces : 
pinnacles  of  ice,  deserts  of  snow. 
Again  on  those  boundaries  of  desola- 
tion you  would  see  the  sign  of  the 
world's  youth  —  its  evergreen  :  only 
that  sign. 

If,  starting  from  your  home  for  the 

18 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

third  time,  you  could  rise  straight  into 
the  air,  higher,  higher,  as  though  you 
were  climbing  the  side  of  an  aerial 
mountain,  you  would  at  last  find  that 
you  had  ascended  the  aerial  mountain 
to  a  height  where,  were  it  a  real  moun- 
tain, it  would  be  capped  with  snow, 
capped  with  perpetual  snow.  For  all 
round  the  earth  wherever  its  actual 
mountains  are  high  enough,  their 
summits  pierce  the  level  of  eternal 
cold  :  above  us  everywhere  lies  the 
unseen  land  of  eternal  cold.  And 
there  again  near  those  summits  your 
eye,  searching  for  some  mitigation  of 
the  solitude,  would  come  upon  the 
evergreen. 

Some  time  in  the  future,  we  do  not 
know  when,  but  some  time  the  cold 
at  the  north  will  have  moved  so  far 
southward  ;  the  cold  at  the  south  will 
have    moved  so  far  northward ;    the 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

cold  in  the  upper  air  will  have  moved 
so  far  downward,  that  the  three  will 
meet  and  when  they  meet  there  will  be 
for  the  earth  one  whiteness,  one  silence 
—  rest :  all  troubled  or  untroubled 
things  will  be  at  rest. 


GREAT  time  had  passed, 
how  great  no  one  knew ; 
there  was  none  to  measure  it. 
It  was  twilight  and  it  was  snowing. 
On  a  steep  mountain's  side  near  its 
bald  summit  thousands  of  feet  above 
the  line  that  any  other  living  thing 
had  ever  crossed,  stood  two  glorious 
fir  trees,  strongest  and  last  of  their 
race.  They  had  climbed  out  of  the 
valley  below  to  this  height  and  had 
so  rooted  themselves  in  rock  and  soil 
that  the  wildest  gales  had  never  been 
able  to  dislodge  them.  Now  the  two 
occupied  that  beetling  cliff  as  the 
final  sentinels  of  Nature.  They  were 
like  two  soldiers  stationed  at  the 
farthest  outpost  against  the  enemy 
and  remaining  faithful  after  all  they 
stood  for  had  perished. 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

The  two  firs  looked  out  toward  the 
land  in  one  direction.  At  the  foot  of 
the  mountain  in  old  human  times  a 
village  had  thriven,  had  worked  and 
played  ;  church  spires  had  risen,  bridal 
candles  had  twinkled  at  twilight,  chil- 
dren had  played  at  snowball.  In  the 
opposite  direction  the  trees  looked 
out  upon  the  ocean,  once  the  rolling 
blue  ocean  singing  its  great  song  but 
level  now  or  ice-roughened  and  white 
and  still  —  its  voice  hushed  with  all 
other  voices,  the  roar  of  its  battleships 
silenced  long  ago. 

The  two  comrade  trees  had  the 
strange  wisdom  of  their  race,  ages  old 
and  gathered  into  them  through  untold 
generations.  They  had  their  memo- 
ries, their  sympathies;  they  reached 
one  another  with  language  past  our 
understanding.  One  fir  grew  lower 
on  the  mountainside  than  the  other ; 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

it  was  like  a  man  so  stationed  on  a 
declivity  that  his  head  barely  reaches 
to  the  shoulder  of  another  man 
higher  up. 

A  slow  bitter  wind  wandered 
through  their  boughs,  smote  their 
delicate  boughs  as  though  these  were 
strings  of  harps.  The  two  firs  became 
like  harpers  of  old  with  whitened  locks 
and  long  hoary  beards,  harpers  who 
never  tire  of  the  past,  of  great  days 
gone  by. 

The  fir  below,  as  the  snowflakes 
became  thicker  on  its  locks  and  sifted 
in  more  closely  about  its  neck,  shook 
itself  loose  from  them  and  spoke  : 

"  Comrade,  the  end  for  us  draws 
near  ;  the  snow  creeps  up.  To-night 
it  will  place  its  cap  on  my  head.  I 
shall  close  my  eyes  and  follow  all 
things  into  their  sleep." 

"  Yes,"  responded  the  fir  above, 
23 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

"  follow  all  things  into  their  sleep. 
If  all  things  were  thus  to  sleep  at  last, 
why  were  they  ever  awakened  ?  It  is 
a  mystery." 

The  slow  wind  caught  the  words 
and  bore  them  outward  across  the 
land  and  outward  across  the  sea  : 

11  Mystery  —  mystery  —  mystery." 

Twilight  deepened.  The  clouds 
trailed  through  the  trees  ;  the  flakes 
were  formed  amid  the  branches ;  it 
was  no  longer  the  fall  of  the  snow : 
the  ice-drops  rested  where  they  were 
formed. 

At  intervals,  surrounded  by  clouds 
and  darkness,  the  low  communings  of 
the  two  trees  went  on : 

"  Where  now  is  he,  the  strange 
human  one,  he  of  the  long  thoughts 
and  the  brief  shadow  ?  " 

"  He  thought  he  was  immortal ; 
to  him  everything  else  on   the  earth 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

perished  but  he  was  immortal.  Where 
is  he  now? " 

"  Once  when  he  was  very  proud  he 
said  that  he  had  a  Creator  who  made 
him  to  lie  down  in  green  pastures." 

"  He  lies  in  white  pastures.  All 
the  millions  of  his  race  lie  in  white 
pastures,  not  green  pastures." 

"  Our  fathers,  the  evergreens,  came 
forth  on  the  earth  countless  ages 
before  he  appeared ;  and  we  are  still 
here  untold  ages  since  he  disappeared 
—  leaving  not  a  trace  of  himself 
behind." 

"  The  most  fragile  of  the  mosses 
was  born  before  he  was  born  and  it 
outlasted  him." 

"  The  frailest  fern  was  not  so  per- 
ishable." 

u  Yet  he  believed  that  he  should 
have  eternal  youth." 

"  That  his  race  would  return 
25 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

to  some  Power  who  had  sent  it 
forth." 

11  That  he  was  ever  being  borne 
onward  to  some  far  off  divine  event 
where  there  was  justice." 

"  Where  there  was  justice  for  all." 

"  He  so  loved  justice  yet  so  with- 
held justice." 

"  It  was  the  first  thing  he  demanded 
and  the  last  thing  he  meted  out." 

Darkness  now  overhung  the  moun- 
tain top,  deep  night  above.  At  inter- 
vals the  firs,  being  fast  covered 
with  snow,  went  on  with  their  broken 
talk  which  wandered  back  and  forth 
along  the  track  of  ages.  They  had 
but  a  few  minutes  for  their  thoughts 
of  the  ages  and  they  lingered  here 
and  there  as  they  willed. 

"  This  is  part  of  the  mystery  :  if  he 
were  but  the  earth's  dust  and  ashes, 
like  everything  else,  how  could  it  be 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

so  ?  How  could  the  earth  which  is 
without  sin  breed  in  his  race  so  many- 
sinners  ?  How  could  the  earth,  since 
it  speaks  only  the  truth,  have  been 
the  father  of  all  his  lies  ?  How,  with- 
out sorrow,  could  it  have  been  the 
mother  of  his  sorrows  ?  The  earth 
never  felt  joy ;  how  could  it  have  made 
him  joy  incarnate  ?  What  does  the 
earth  know  of  greatness  yet  it  made 
him  great.  How  could  that  be  ?  " 
"  It  is  part  of  the  mystery." 
"Had  they  realized  how  alone  in 
the  universe  they  were,  would  they 
not  have  turned  to  each  other  for 
happiness  ? " 

11  Would  not  all  have  helped  each  ? " 
"  Would  not  each  have  helped  all  ?  " 
"  The  longest  of  their  rivers  was  the 
river  of  their  own  blood." 

"  If  they  could  have  caught  it  in  the 
basin  of  some  empty  sea,  they  could 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

have  floated  on  it  all  their  fleets  of 
battleships." 

Once  in  the  night  they  spoke  to- 
gether : 

11  And  all  his  gods,  his  many  gods 
in  many  lands  with  many  faces  —  they 
all  sleep  now  in  their  ancient  temples  ; 
it  is  at  last  the  true  twilight  of  the 
gods." 

"  They  set  shepherds  over  them. 
Then  the  shepherds  declared  them- 
selves appointed  by  the  Creator  of  the 
universe  to  lead  other  men  as  their 
sheep :  now  what  difference  is  there 
between  the  sheep  and  the  shep- 
herds ? " 

"  The  shepherds  lie  with  the  sheep 
in  the  same  white  pasture.  They  were 
all  sheep  :  they  had  no  shepherd." 

"And  their  sins  were  the  sins  of 
sheep,  but  the  sins  of  silly  sheep." 

"  Still,  what  think  you  became  of 
28 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

all  that  men  did  ?  How  could  all  that 
perish  ?  It  was  so  solid,  so  enduring  ; 
it  was  so  splendid ;  it  seemed  worthy 
to  be  immortal." 

"  What  became  of  Science  ?  How 
could  all  that  Science  was  come  to 
naught  ? " 

"  And  his  Art  —  that  inner  light  of 
himself  which  was  Art  ?  Do  his  pic- 
tures hang  nowhere  ?  Is  his  music 
never  to  be  heard  again  ?  " 

"And  the  love  that  was  in  him  — 
was  it  but  a  blind  force  rising  into 
him  as  the  power  of  the  clods  ?  " 

11  What  became  of  the  woman  who 
threw  herself  away  for  love  :  did  she 
find  no  one  at  last  to  weep  at  the  feet 
of,  no  one  who  would  free  her  soul 
from  her  body  ?  " 

"  What  became  of  the  man  who  was 
false :  did  he  ever  find  a  Power  that 
could  make  him  true  ?  " 
29 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

"What  became  of  the  man  who 
threw  himself  away  in  being  true  :  did 
any  Power  ever  make  good  to  him  his 
ruin? " 

"  The  young  soldier  who  poured 
out  his  life's  blood  for  his  country: 
was  he  never  to  have  any  country  ? " 

On  the  long  road  of  the  ages  here 
and  there  they  loitered  with  their 
thoughts : 

"  But  he  did  fill  the  world  with  a 
great  light  of  himself,  with  the  splen- 
dor of  what  he  was." 

"  And  yet  it  was  but  half  his  life, 
half  his  glory.  He  forever  dwelt  in 
less  than  half  of  the  light  of  his  race  : 
the  rest  he  himself  put  out  yet  never 
knew  the  darkness  it  left  him  in. 
More  than  half  his  light  he  put  out 
in  neglected  childhood  and  in  youth 
slain  on  the  battlefield." 

"All  the  greatest  names  up  and 
30 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

down  the  terrible  field  of  his  history 
—  there  were  just  as  many  that  he 
threw  away  :  he  dwelt  in  half  the  light 
of  his  race." 

If  there  had  been  a  clock  to  meas- 
ure the  hour  it  must  now  have  been 
near  midnight  as  it  was  reckoned  in 
old  human  times.  Suddenly  the  fir 
below  spoke  out  hopefully  : 

"  May  they  not  after  all  be  gathered 
elsewhere,  strangely  altered  yet  the 
same  ?  Is  some  other  star  their  safe 
habitation  ?  Were  they  right,  sheep 
that  they  were,  in  thinking  themselves 
immortal  ?  Are  they  now  in  some 
other  world  ? " 

"  What  tfnow  we  ?  What  knew  he  ? 
That  was  the  mystery." 

The  winds  caught  the  word  and 
carried  it  away : 

"  Mystery  —  mystery  —  mystery." 

"  Our  fathers  remembered  the  day 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

when  he  went  into  the  woods  and  cut 
down  one  of  our  people  and  took  it 
into  his  house.  On  the  evergreen  he 
set  the  star :  they  were  for  his  youth 
and  his  immortality.  Around  those 
emblems  children  pressed  their  faces 
and  reaching  out  plucked  gifts  from  the 
branches.  The  myriads  and  myriads 
of  the  children !  What  became  of 
them  ?  " 

"  Be  still  1  "  whispered  the  fir  tree 
above.  "  At  that  moment,  while  you 
spoke,  I  felt  the  soft  fingers  of  a  child 
searching  my  boughs.  Was  not  this 
what  in  human  times  they  called 
Christmas  Eve  ?  There  they  are 
again,  the  fingers  of  a  child  !  " 

"  Hearken!"  whispered  the  fir 
below.  "  Down  in  the  valley  elfin 
horns  are  blowing  and  elfin  drums 
beat.  Do  you  not  hear  them  —  faint 
and  far  away.  And  that  sound  — 
32 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 

was  it  not  the  bells  of  the  reindeer ! 
It  passed  :  it  was  a  wandering  soul  of 
Christmas." 

"  But  they  are  all  around  me !  They 
are  all  around  you !  Myriads  and 
myriads  are  coming,  are  on  the  way 
toward  us,  the  last  of  their  Christmas 
trees.  The  souls  of  all  children, 
wide-awake,  are  gathering  about  us 
ere  we  pass  into  the  earth's  sleep." 

"  The  souls  of  the  children  visit  us 
ere  we  sleep." 

Not  long  after  this  the  fir  standing 
below  spoke  for  the  last  time  : 

"  Comrade,  it  is  the  end  for  me. 
The  cap  of  snow  is  on  my  head.  I 
follow  all  things." 

The  snow  closed  over  it. 

The  other  fir  now  stood  alone. 
The  snow  crept  higher  and  higher. 
Late  in  the  long  night  it  communed 
once  more,  solitary : 

33 


THE  LAST  CHRISTMAS  TREE 


11 1,  then,  close  the  train  of  earthly 
things.  And  I  was  the  emblem  of 
immortality ;  let  the  highest  be  the 
last  to  perish  !  Power,  that  put  forth 
all  things  for  a  purpose,  you  have 
fulfilled,  without  explaining  it,  that 
purpose.  I  follow  all  things  into  their 
sleep." 

The  sun  rose  clear :  all  the  moun- 
tain tops  were  white  and  cold  and  at 
peace. 

The  long  war  between  the  crystal 
and  the  planet  was  over :  the  snow- 
flake  had  conquered. 

The  earth  was  dead. 


&    &    P 


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